Fort Gunnybags

The watching eye at the top of this bronze echoes the one on the Committee's own 1856 medallion, and the tablet keeps the Committee's name for the place: a warehouse walled with gunny sacks and cannon where suspects were held without due process. The Committee hanged four men that year and banished others, and the boxer Yankee Sullivan died in one of its cells. Sherman, who resigned his militia command over it, wrote that because they controlled the press, they wrote their own history. No state plaque stands here.

What the plaque says

Fort Gunny-Bags was situated on this spot Headquarters of the Vigilance Committee during the year 1856

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Muir Beach Overlook — 11 mi
  A cliff edge on Highway 1, and the concrete dugouts where two-man crews watched the sea after Pearl Harbor.
• Muir Woods National Monument — 12 mi
  A redwood canyon saved from a reservoir by a gift, and named for a man who had been there once.
• Earthquake Trail — 28 mi
  A short loop along the San Andreas, where a broken fence shows how far Point Reyes moved in under a minute in 1906.
• Kule Loklo — 28 mi
  A Coast Miwok village built in the 1970s to honour a people its builders were told had died out. They had not.

More markers nearby

• Site of Ship Niantic — steps away
• Site of What Cheer House — 0.2 mi
• Shoreline Markers — 0.2 mi
• Long Wharf — 0.2 mi